I bought my 71 beetle in October 2014 from a fellow damage vdub club member, (who had bought her for his daughter but she went travelling instead) she had been off the road since 2011 when her mot ran out and previous owners couldn’t afford to fix her.
After sitting idle for four years I bought her in the October, had her collected by transporter and safely deposited on my drive until my mechanic could start work on her (he was pretty busy, so in the Feb of 2015 I announced that I wanted to have her on the road to take to Ninove, Freddy Files.
So my then mechanic rushed her in and did two frantic weeks of welding/spraying, new heater channels, (that my kids bought me for Xmas 2014) body off and back on again and she passed her mot on Monday, and we drove her (as part of Damage vdub club convoy) to Ninove on the following Friday, I hadn’t actually driven her properly before that day !!
Lots of people said I was mad, but we made it, I was in a convoy of lots of fellow vdub friends and there were two mechanics in the group so I was confident we would be ok.
And we were, we set of on our first adventure together, and I’ve driven her pretty much every day since then. I absolutely love her ?
She has always been in need of lots of TLC, and I’m slowly trying to get bits done, she has had a brand new front end since then, I try and get as hands-on as I can with her and I’m lucky I’ve got a very patient mechanic friend that helps me keep her alive. I’ve given her an electric washer bottle upgrade too as I got fed up with the tyre pressure set up thing never ever working. I also recently reupholstered the front seats as they had all but disintegrated, it was a bit of recycle reuse, a friend gave me some old seat parts and covers and I stripped it all and made two lovely new seats out of it . The one good thing about this lockdown is that I’ve had time to spend on her, so she looks a lot better now than she did, her paintwork is tired and faded, and there is some dodgy signs of overspray in areas but I don’t care, it’s kind of her character, I nicknamed her 50 shades of orange.
With the use of a good colour restore polish and some energetic buffing she’s looking much better at mo. However, she still needs lots of TLC but if you squint your eyes and don’t stand too close you won’t notice. I always say she’s no show model but I love her, all the same, ? It was a childhood dream to own a beetle and here we are 5 years later and she’s still mine. Can’t imagine ever not having her (is that weird lol).
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